Birth Of A League Of Nations
Birth Of A League Of Nations
League of Nations. A living thing is born (Foley 149). With these words, United States President Woodrow Wilson presented the first draft of the Covenant to the nations attending the Paris Conference of 1919 and to those around the world. This Covenant was to establish an international organization that would promote peace and security throughout the world and provide a forum through which the different interests of nations could be peacefully resolved. President Wilson named this living thing the League of Nations. After the four devastating years of the First World War, an Armistice was finally signed in 1918 and the nations around the world began to realize that some sort of new international system had to be established to prevent the recurrence of so great a disaster. This hatred of war spread throughout the civilized world and eventually lead to the formation of the League of Nations. During its short life span of twenty years, all of the recognized nations at one point or other be! came a member of the League, with the exception of one: the United States. How was it possible, then, that a country that takes pride in peaceful negotiation and international leadership exclude itself from the very institution it helped create? President Woodrow Wilson had no doubt that the United States should join the League of Nations. The nation had been united in war and therefore, he assumed, would be no less united in their support for his Fourteen Points, which served as a model for the Covenant of the League. Upon failing to gain support from Congress, Wilson announced to the world that he would attend the Paris Conference in person and resolved that the establishment of the League should become its first and principal task. By this, he believed that he was representing the will of the American people. Proving to be untrue, Wilson tried defeat the opposing arguments within his country by explaining that, America and her determinations now constitute the balance of moral force in the world, and if we do not use that moral force we will be of all peoples the most derelict. We are in the presence of this great choice, whether we will stand by the mass of our own people and the mass of mankind (Foley 147! ). The president failed to achieve broad domestic consensus on international foreign policy...